Personally I'd go with Toshiba. They tend to be pretty solid. Altho I do own a DELL and absolutly love it. I think the key to any laptop is to not buy the bottom of the line model. Anything that has "onboard" something or another isn't going to be as good as one that they have to spec out the entire thing.
So you get what you pay for
Acer didn't make the list???
Yeah, you should make a new one, this poll is making many brands. Make sure to add:
Asus, Acer, Lenovo (instead of IBM), Fujitsu, Averatech,
and get rid of Compaq, as it was bought out by HP.